Miami's 'intimate knowledge' a good thing

Work with me on this ...

The Dolphins hired Joe Philbin as their head coach. He was the offensive coordinator at Green Bay and so one supposes he is familiar with Green Bay reserve quarterback Matt Flynn, who is expected to be available as a free agent this offseason as he searches for a starting job.

Philbin hired Mike Sherman as his offensive coordinator. Sherman was the head coach at Texas A&M where one supposes he became very familiar with starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Tannehill is available in the coming draft as perhaps the third or fourth-rated quarterback in the draft.

General manager Jeff Ireland, meanwhile, is a graduate of Baylor University. One supposes he still has ties to Baylor, where quarterback Robert Griffin III did great work in winning the Heisman Trophy in 2011. Griffin will be in the draft and could be the first or second player selected and a target for the Dolphins if they get the hankerin' for trading up.

So, pardon me for doing a lot of supposing here, but I'm supposing the Dolphins should have an advantage over other teams when it comes to knowing and understanding Flynn, Tannehill and Grffin.

"I guess you could suppose that, couldn't you?" Ireland told me during his appearance on my radio show, Armando and Perkins on 640 Sports (640-AM in South Florida) Tuesday. "Yeah, you know, we have some intimate knowledge of a lot of different people. Obviously with Mike and Joe and my ties to those universities and obviously the work that our scouts do -- my pro scouts and college scouts and how they surround themselves with resources and people -- we have intimate knowlege of the market. And that's a good thing."

It is a clear advantage in a situation where more information is always better. Of the five top quarterback possibilities for the Dolphins this offseason, including Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck, the Dolphins are ahead of the game on the three mentioned above. They obviously have work to do in gathering information on Manning and Luck, but I have serious doubts Luck is within reach so really, the issue is they know three of the likely four players on an "intimate" level.

Advantage Miami.

The Ireland interview is below. In fact, the entire 8 o'clock hour of the show is below, including our interview with Mike Florio of Profootballtalk.com:

Ireland is aware of the comments about playing with elite quarterbacks that Brandon Marshall made following his winning of the MVP award at the Pro Bowl.

Marshall said his job was easier when he was catching passes from elite quarterbacks because they "put the ball in the right spots." Marshall also agreed with me when I said on my twitter account that if the Dolphins improve the quarterback position, they improve that position and Marshall at the same time. He retweeted my tweet.

Some of you took exception with the comments for various reasons, among them that they were a slap at Moore. Ireland disagreed.

"I don't know if it's a slap in the face at all," he said. "Matt did a nice job this year. And he's going to continue to develop as any quarterback we bring in is going to do. When you're over there and playing with Pro Bowl quarterbacks, they do things differently than some other guys. They're there for a reason. You've got the Tom Bradys of the world, and obviously he wasn't over there, but you have the Ben Roethlisbergers and Drew Breeses of the world and they're Pro Bowl quarterbacks. They play at a little different level than other quarterbacks. But that's not a slap at Matt. Matt did a great job and I think Brandon would tell you Matt did a great job."

I agree.

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The Dolphins continue to fill out their coaching staff. I've been told Jim Turner, a longtime friend of offensive coordinator Mike Sherman who served as the Aggies offensive line coach the past three years, is close to being hired in Miami. I presume he will coach the offensive line.

No announcement has been made by the team. Turner has never coached in the NFL. He did coach at Delaware, Northeastern, Harvard, Temple and Louisiana Tech. He also served from 1990 to 1994 in the United State Marine Corps.